Death and the City: Funerary Practices and Social Transformations during the Archaic Period in Greek Poleis and Beyond

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Bioarchaeology of the Phaleron Cemetery, Archaic Greece: Current Research and Insights" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The abundance in textual sources and richness of its archaeological record make Athens one of the most studied Greek cities during Classical Antiquity. However, research has focused principally on Athens, leaving much of the periphery of the Classical world largely unexplored. Scholars have mostly focused in Classical period assemblages, while only little attention has been placed to the precedent period. Furthermore, studies concerning the Archaic period funerary record are rather scarce, both in Athens and elsewhere. Lastly, bioarchaeological studies of respective contexts are greatly absent. Humans are physical mediators of the interaction of cultural and natural phenomena, thus, by combining bioarchaeological data with the burial record, valuable insights can be gained regarding sociopolitical transformations diachronically. The present paper aims to offer a first synthesis of recent and older publications with regard to the funerary and demographic data in order to explore social transformations in Greek poleis at the advent of city-state formation. Emphasis is placed in data coming from the Attic peninsula and the Phaleron cemetery, which is the focus of the present theme session.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Bioarchaeology of the Phaleron Cemetery, Archaic Greece: Current Research and Insights   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39911.0